M.J. Andersen: To rescue Detroit, save the art

Detroit, if you have never seen it, is unlike any other American city: ghostly and beautiful in the parts that should seem sad. It has swaths of deserted, modestly-scaled Victorians. Crumbling brick row...

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M.J. Andersen
Posted Feb. 7, 2014 @ 12:01 am

Detroit, if you have never seen it, is unlike any other American city: ghostly and beautiful in the parts that should seem sad. It has swaths of deserted, modestly-scaled Victorians. Crumbling brick row houses sprout greenery, as if they have been repurposed to grow trees instead of children.

I was there years ago to watch high school debaters compete. My husband managed a few free hours one afternoon while I was judging, and dashed off to see the Detroit Institute of Arts. He came back agog over the breadth of the collection, the magnificent building and, most especially, Diego Rivera’s murals.

The murals, completed in 1933, depict Ford’s Rouge manufacturing complex. Even in photographs, they evoke a magnificent nation at work. Somehow, men and machines have been de-greased and turned into a fairy tale. Production is the entire plot. If women, sitting primly doing piecework, seem to play a minor role, it is because making transcends human drama. Muscle is all.

Detroit now stands as a mismanaged mess, so desperate to raise money that it is tempted to sell its art. The city owns some 1,700 pieces outright. Their value has been estimated, by the auction house Christie’s, to lie between $421 million and $805 million.

Last July, the city declared bankruptcy, the largest such municipal action in U.S. history. Among the creditors lining up are pensioners who once worked for the city, and were promised far more than it could deliver. Now, they fear the kind of cuts that could turn a modest retirement into sheer survival. It is hard to blame them for wanting to sell the Van Gogh.

Fortunately for the museum, and for the city too, a group of foundations have come together to try to save the collection. They include the Ford Foundation and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, and so far have amassed $370 million in pledges. The museum itself has vowed to raise another $100 million.

The idea is to transfer the museum’s ownership, through a one-time sale, to a nonprofit. The city would use the proceeds to meet pension obligations. For the deal to be accepted, however, the pledge amount would probably have to match Christie’s appraisal. Even then, some creditors could hold out, arguing that the city-owned art is worth more than Christie’s has said.

Detroit’s woes are monumental, cross-bred of corruption and a floundering economy. In filing for bankruptcy protection, it listed $18 billion in debts it could not pay. But plundering the art collection would ultimately destroy the museum, and with it the city’s soul.

The sooner the city’s government gives up control of the museum, the better Detroit’s chance at salvation.

The museum is a testament to timeless human values: human striving at its broadest; expression at its most personal. Great art is a record of everything human beings have ever hoped for and ever loved.

But the museum is also a testament to the city’s proud history.

To be born again, Detroit must be more than corner stores and strip malls. More, even, than car-parts manufacturers, tech shops and hip new watch designers. It will need ways to minister to its own ailing spirit, and to beckon the world to visit.

Detroit’s Institute of Arts offers room after gracious room of fuel for the battered soul. And under its current leadership’s “Art Is For Everyone” campaign, crowds are surging through its doors.

The writer P.J. O’Rourke recently proposed turning Detroit into Hong Kong circa 1949. A British colony at the time, Hong Kong was flat on its back. It had endured wartime occupation and was full of refugees from the communist takeover of China.

Hong Kong’s British administrator followed a policy of benign neglect that notably included no taxes (also no safety net). Turn Detroit’s 143 square miles into Hong Kong — with a territorial status resembling Guam’s — and watch the investors come running, O’Rourke suggests.

Well maybe. But in the meantime, with enough foundation help, the art museum could cut the umbilical cord, and become the child of a nonprofit organization, as most great public museums in this country are. Never again would it have to face false debates about what matters more: beauty for the elites, or food for the masses.

Art really is about and for all of us. The best of it is made in that spirit, and invites us to engage, to argue, even to reject it. A great museum ensures that everyone has the chance.

These days, Detroit is not the only place where Americans are worrying over their pensions, checking and re-checking the numbers, hoping they will make it to the end.

But, like little else, pension thoughts drive home the reminder that we are only here for a short span. Knowing we will leave something for those who come next — whether an actual canyon, or water lilies gloriously painted by Monet — can make it almost bearable.

M.J. Andersen (manderse@providencejournal.com) is a member of the Journal’s editorial board. Her columns appear on alternate Fridays.